SGO or Fostering - We now parent 4 grandchildren

[Sparky63]

Hello to the FRG forum and thank you for accepting me.
As with many other first time posters this is a long story but I will do my best to keep it short.

So briefly I will go back to 2011, my wife and I have been married 15 years I am 63 and my wife is 55. Back in 2011 our grandson was placed with us by social services after he suffered a fracture to his ankle.

We fought like tigers to keep him out of the care system, our daughter and partner were very toxic and S.C. wanted to remove him from the family completely. We had a fostering assessment and we were able to demonstrate that we would be able to keep the parents at distance until Social Care had finished their parenting assessment.

Due to a lack of engagement the assessment took months and months. After 18 months of fostercaring our grandson was placed back with his parents against our wishes.

We were subsequently forced to give up our fostering status by Social Care.

Fast forward to 2014, we had been working with a safeguarding plan laid out by S.C. with multiple instances where our grandson had to stay with us for weeks or months and by this time we had a second child placed with us too. Eventually we had a third child, none of them could go home due to the parents lifestyles, this included multiple drug raids, violence, jail, alcohol and drug abuse etc etc.

From 2014 until now we have brought them up permanently with no financial assistance from the L.A.

In July 2023 we had the final and fourth child placed with us aged 5, child protection were heavily involved and looking for a permanent placement. Currently a parenting assessment is being carried out however the L.A. have gone into PLO.

None of the children can go back, the fourth child will most likely be placed with us permanently and the only L.A. funding we get is £55 a week.

The social worker has advised us we should consider an SGO and to get this in place for all the children, they are not it seems currently considering us as fostercarers for the latest edition. We have sold everything of value over the years to enable us to bring the children up. We had to ask our own four grown up children to leave our home early and forge their life outside of our home due to space and finances.

Should we go down the SGO route and try and get all four children protected and seek some funding that way?

Can we push the L.A. for fostering status for the last child if the parenting assessment fails and she is placed with us.

Could the SGO be assisted by one out of four being officially fostered remembering we need some level of PR on the other three to keep them safe.

Finally would getting fostering status on the last child improve our chances of getting the L.A. to accept fostering on the other three as well.

I couldn't work out the best thread to post in so huge apologies if I got this wrong.

Thank you.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear Sparky63

Thank you for your post and welcome to the Board.

Your main question seems to ask whether you should consider becoming a special guardian for your grandchildren or ask to be a foster (kinship) carer for them.

The most helpful advice I am able to give is to suggest that in the first instance you ask the social workers to clarify the ‘status’ of the children. You have said several times that the children ‘were placed with you’. If this is the case and social workers asked you to care for them, then they 'should' be considered looked after and you 'should' be considered their carer and be paid a fostering allowance.

For more clarity do consider this webpage about voluntary arrangements versus private arrangements and see Letters 4 or 5 at the bottom of this page which outline how to request a fostering assessment/support. For information the Government has a recommended allowance for foster carers, you can see here that £55 is not the amount, do ask the social worker about this.

Most (all) local authorities in England have a ‘published’ family and friends care policy, you may find a link to yours (the children’s local authority) here on our website.

There are a few ways to acquire parental responsibility for your grandchildren such as a Child Arrangements Order or the Special Guardianship Order.

You may want to consider your options once you have clarity about the children’s status.

I hope this information is helpful.

Best wishes

Suzie